I am not entirely sure I could code at 240 words per minute, even if my brain were directly connected to my computer via a thought to text engine, unless it could translate visual thought concepts.

But that would be in the realm of sci-fi, where you could create a UI and make it work, by just imagining yourself using it.

Currently, I'd have to say the bulk of my development time is not spent on actual typing of code, but rather testing, debugging, and research, and I don't see learning stenotype shortening the time spent doing that, by very much, even at double that rate (480 WPM).

I've never worked in a room full of coders. But I would tend to think sessions where they just type in a flurry of working code are routines they've done so many times they could just paste them in from their code snippets. But they want to show off.

There was a guy in my analyst group who was also a concert pianist. He liked to type at top speed to show off this finger dexterity. But he never let anyone time him that I know of. He just liked to see the text fill up the screen. Also he didn't care about typos.

I suppose if someone made a career switch from stenographer to developer it would only be natural. On the downside there's enough metrics already without being expected to "type" 200+ wpm of bug free code.